Prayer for the Day

by Revd Canon David White

5th April 2026 - Easter Sunday

Lord, at this Easter time we ask you
to increase our faith, our hope and our love.
Give us faith that overcomes the world
and enables us to face both life and death calm and unafraid.
Give us the hope that looks beyond this mortal life
and grasps hold of the things unseen and eternal.
Give us the love that binds us more closely to one another,
and to you our risen Lord;
to whom be all glory and praise, dominion and power,
now and forever. Amen.

In his first letter to the Christian community at Corinth (1 Cor 13.13) St Paul expresses his view that the virtues of faith, hope and love are so important that they ‘remain’ or in some translations, ‘abide’ - which may lead us to ask what he means by those words ‘remain’ and ‘abide’. It is thought that he means that faith, hope and love are so important for Christians that they are completely embedded into what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

This Easter prayer, by the great Anglican compiler of prayers Frank Colquhoun, calls upon the risen Christ to increase in us these things that are so necessary but still so difficult to quantify. However, the prayer does give us some pointers, namely that we may have a faith that enables us to face all that happens in a ‘calm and unafraid’ way; that we may have hope so as to discern the spiritual context of our lives; and that, by love, we may be bound more closely to one other and to God. It is a prayer to be said this Easter as we contemplate the reality of our lives and our world at this time.